Available on: PTN 12”

Ramp Recordings sub-label PTN is obviously determined to take no prisoners in its quest to conquer UK Funky in 2010. The dust has barely settled on the label’s first 12” from South Wales man Doc Daneeka, but here’s another bright young upstart with four more hotly anticipated, percussive dancefloor tracks. And as with the first release, the hype is more than justified.

Hackman is young Ben Hackman, one of a seemingly ever-increasing swarm of young producers using garage and dubstep as a launch pad from which to spew forth their own distinct furrow of up-tempo bass business. Best known for the ace ‘Pistol in your Pocket’ on Fabric’s Elevator Music comp from earlier this year, his ‘More than Ever’ shines a light into an often dark corner of dance music; with its heady blend of syncopated drums, heavy basslines and pitched up female vocals, it resembles slowed down bassline house before it does grime or dubstep.

Elsewhere on this EP, ‘Nobody Minds’ is a bright eyed and bushy tailed piece of house-based business while ‘Gutterflower’ is on a more percussive flex, irresistibly wiped down in swabs of synths and xylophone. Hackman here does an admirable job at following in the slipstream of Doc Daneeka’s Deadly Rhythm EP, and while Hackman obviously suckles at a similarly technicolour teat of house music, he’s made something distinctly his own here. Roll on part three.

Jim Ottewill